If every district in the country develops a different message, are we really learning anything from this? I was looking forward to this book, but was secretly hoping that it might list some of the frames we would need to discuss in order to win. One of the greatest problems I find in most progressive messaging groups is that we’re working in isolation and so everyone develops a different frame that never gets traction. Are there any plans to specifically expand on which frames we should all tie into to reach people’s emotions and make them sympathetic to progressive politics?

It is our hope that this project will do this very thing, Colin. As we engage in discussions about strategic initiatives, we will want to work together and identify the core themes that allow us to build capacity for setting a Progressive Agenda and moving toward it.

A critical piece of this process will be the identification of strategic frames and discussions of how to employ them across the country.

Oof. That last sentence needs a rewrite. It looks like the front end of one sentence got mashed up with the back end of a completely different sentence. Otherwise, I love this; its the handbook I’ve been waiting for.

While framing and messaging are powerful tools, ultimately they should only ever be secondary to building raw power. The Liberal Revolution of the 19th Century didn’t win over the Ancien Regime of monarchy by arguing really hard, but by building an unbeatable base of economic power. I think this is part of the reason the left is quagmired in its issue silos, rather than engaging the real world with practical grassroots solutions and building alternative institutions, instead it attempts to convert people through persuasion and expects the government to buy us out of all our problems.

This section seems to lack clarity. I’m not sure what is meant by “inherently bad” or “inherently social”. Is this an attempt to define the progressive “frame” within the “nature” vs. “nurture” debate? If so, it seems to indicate that the progressive view comes down solidly on the side of “nurture”. This would be tragically unfair to mother-nature as she has gone to a great deal of trouble over the past several million years working out our patterns of social behavior.
In addition, I don’t think the current conservative frame, in this context, is “people are inherently bad”. Just the opposite. It should read: some people are “inherently good” and they should be punished when they do bad things. But, there are some people who ARE “inherently bad” and they need to be separated from the rest of us.
I’m not suggesting my version should replace the existing one. Just would like to see this one defined a little better. Or maybe it should be tossed out altogether.

This is a fundamental understanding – the right-wing has set the agenda for over three decades now. So much so that what they, and subsequently, the media dub “liberal” or “leftist” is actually “middle-of-the-road” or center at best.

Does it really have to be either/or? What are the other choices? What are the images. When I hear “strong families and communities” I actually get picture from some opera from Mrs. Mao – and I don’t mean that in a freak-out communism way. I mean it literally – the rosy cheeks, the big smiles, the strong muscles. I don’t get a felt-sense of what I think you’re really talking about. These concepts are actually very complicated I think, and need more storytelling and picture painting before they come into focus (as it were).

By now you’re probably wondering where the strategy guidance comes in. We don’t presume to know everything that will be needed. We’ll provide many insights and ideas, as well as some process structure, but we’re also counting on the crowd to contribute in these areas (and others) as well. Our contribution comes from years working as cognitive scientists, social scientists, and political strategists. So we’ll get the conversation started by explaining how progressives can frame the debate and set the course for America in the next several decades.

You may be familiar with the work of George Lakoff, whose writings have brought frame analysis into the political mainstream. Several members of our team worked closely with Lakoff as Fellows of the former Rockridge Institute, analyzing political discourse and revealing value-laden frames that promote progressive and conservative ideology.

If you aren’t familiar with frame analysis, don’t worry. It is simply a set of research methods for revealing the mental models that constitute how people think about and understand the world. Frame theory arose in several different fields around the same time in the mid-1970’s to explain the inner logic of human thought—spanning the disciplines of psychology, robotics, linguistics, sociology, and media studies.

What is a Frame?

“Frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality—and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. [T]hey structure our ideas and concepts, they shape how we reason, and they even impact how we perceive and how we act. For the most part, our use of frames is unconscious and automatic—we use them without realizing it.”

Frames are everywhere around us. They are the conceptual models in our minds that allow us to make sense of the world. We cannot have a coherent thought without them. There is no such thing as “choosing” to use frames, only a matter of being more conscious about selecting frames rather than blindly using them without knowing it.

What Do We DO With Them?

So how do we use frames to make America’s course a progressive path into the future? It helps to think of framing as agenda-setting, a common usage in the policymaking world. We want to set the context for action that places our ideals, our most pressing concerns, and our core values at the forefront of public discourse.

As an example, consider the Industrial Education Frame that is setting the scope of education policy in America today. This frame places emphasis on a core set of ideas about schools as places that can be run like factories, where knowledgeable students are products to be produced like widgets and built on the assembly line (thus the emphasis on developing technology-based “teacher proof” standardized lessons), and responsibility is understood through the lens of top-down authoritarianism (e.g., quality control is molding all students to pass the same state or national standards, which are measured with standardized tests, and teachers with students who make low scores are punished). The conservative agenda for public education is understood through this web of concepts that collectively represents a conceptual model for education reform.

As a progressive you probably recoil at the thought of schools set up as factories. Your values beckon a different understanding of education based on an intuitive sense that children are individuals who blossom, not machines that are can be built to order. You probably prefer to think of schools as a place to cultivate young minds, where teachers nurture the learning process and all children grow smarter and more engaged in civic affairs.

This understanding stems from the Garden School Frame that allows us to think about children as living beings who need proper nourishment and guidance to grow into healthy adults. It also provides a context for seeing teachers as valued professionals with a responsibility to both the children they teach and the larger communities those children will join as they become adults. Teachers are seen as both gardeners sharing the fruits of knowledge and stewards of the education landscape. (Learn more about the framing of education here.)

It is easy to understand why framing matters so much for politics. If the wrong conceptual model is used to understand political issues, it will be very unlikely that effective solutions get implemented. As long as education is thought of as a 19th Century industrial process we won’t get the 21st Century public education system we need and deserve. And these deeper assumptions do more than set the context for problem-solving, they also establish the right-and-wrong sentiments for what society should do and how people should be treated.

Throughout the last several decades, conservative frames have put up boundaries around our public discourse, and haven’t been seriously challenged by progressives. Because of this, conservatives dominate the agenda for policy-making in every arena from environment to economy, from national security to international trade, and from taxation and governance to the act of voting at the heart of our representative democracy.

Using Frames to Set Our Agenda

Luckily, the foundational work on this has already been done. The Rockridge Institute brought together thinkers and strategists who identified many of the central frames in political discourse. An archive of papers has been created on the Cognitive Policy Works website to preserve this legacy. And many frame analysts emerged on the scene (ourselves included) as beneficiaries of the unique training that this work provided. We are now engaging in the more difficult work of introducing frame analysis into the daily operations of progressive organizations.

Is the essence of human nature that we are rational actors who make individual choices? Or is the essence of human nature that we are ecological beings embedded in a web of physical, cultural, and biological relationships that shape how we act in the world?

Each pairing of frames reveals a deep tension in how we might understand the world around us. As we consider what the American Story should be, we’ll chose which of these and other frames often does, as well as should be, primarily guiding our thinking in order to understand what it means to live in a good society.